Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo on Tuesday rejected reports that Guyana has agreed to purchase natural gas from ExxonMobil’s Stabroek Block to fuel the Wales Gas-to-Energy plant, telling reporters at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre that the gas going to the power plant is free and that the arrangement was settled in negotiations years ago.
The denial matters more than its tone suggests. Wales — anchored on a 300-megawatt plant designed to draw roughly 50 million cubic feet per day from the Liza field — has been pitched as the structural lever for cutting Guyana’s electricity costs and breaking the country’s exposure to imported fuel oil. How the feedstock is priced is the foundation of whether that promise holds. A purchase contract would mean ratepayers ultimately financing the gas; a free-gas arrangement keeps the cost on the operator side of the production-sharing agreement.
The context tightens the stakes. Prime Minister Mark Phillips told a regional energy ministers’ dialogue late last month that Guyana’s fuel-import bill rose roughly 74.8 per cent between January and mid-April, with jet fuel costs alone up 102.6 per cent. Local gasoline retail prices climbed 32 per cent over the same window. Wales was meant to be the structural answer to exactly this exposure. If the project comes online as scheduled this year, the pricing structure Jagdeo described will sit at the centre of the national budget conversation.
Source: Kaieteur News, May 12, 2026.